that dark shadow of the bridge.

"You shall now know what we expect of you," resumed the minister, after
allowing a short pause for Christophe's astonishment. "In order that
you may make no mistake, we feel obliged to initiate you into the most
important secrets of the Reformation."

The prince and La Renaudie emphasized the minister's speech by a
gesture, the latter having paused to allow the prince to speak, if he
so wished. Like all great men engaged in plotting, whose system it is
to conceal their hand until the decisive moment, the prince kept
silence--but not from cowardice. In these crises he was always the soul
of the conspiracy; recoiling from no danger and ready to risk his own
head; but from a sort of royal dignity he left the explanation of the
enterprise to his minister, and contented himself with studying the new
instrument he was about to use.

"My child," said Chaudieu, in the Huguenot style of address, "we are
about to do battle for the first time with the Roman prostitute. In a
few days either our legions will be dying on the scaffold, or the Guises
will be dead. This is the first call to arms on behalf of our religion
in France, and France will not lay down those arms till they have
conquered. The question, mark you this, concerns the nation, not the
kingdom. The majority of the nobles of the kingdom see plainly what
the Cardinal de Lorraine and his brother are seeking. Under pretext of
defending the Catholic religion, the house of Lorraine means to claim
the crown of France as its patrimony. Relying on the Church, it has made
the Church a formidable ally; the monks are its support, its acolytes,
its spies. It has assumed the post of guardian to the throne it is
seeking to usurp; it protects the house of Valois which it means to
destroy. We have decided to take up arms because the liberties of the
people and the interests of the nobles are equally threatened. Let us
smother at its birth a faction as odious as that of the Burgundians who
formerly put Paris and all France to fire and sword. It required a Louis
XI. to put a stop to the quarrel between the Burgundians and the Crown;
and to-day a prince de Conde is needed to prevent the house of Lorraine
from re-attempting that struggle. This is not a civil war; it is a duel
between the Guises and the Reformation,--a duel to the death! We will
make their heads fall, or they shall have ours."

"Well said!" cried the prince.

"In this crisis, Christophe